As I sat in the woods admiring the beauty of the blue butterfly.

May 1. 

Hear the ruby-crowned wren. 

We accuse savages of worshipping only the bad spirit, or devil, though they may distinguish both a good and a bad; but they regard only that one which they fear and worship the devil only. We too are savages in this, doing precisely the same thing. 

This occurred to me yesterday as I sat in the woods admiring the beauty of the blue butterfly. 

We are not chiefly interested in birds and insects, for example, as they are ornamental to the earth and cheering to man, but we spare the lives of the former only on condition that they eat more grubs than they do cherries, and the only account of the insects which the State encourages is of the "Insects Injurious to Vegetation.” 

We too admit both a good and a bad spirit, but we worship chiefly the bad spirit, whom we fear. We do not think first of the good but of the harm things will do us. 

The catechism says that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, which of course is applicable mainly to God as seen in his works. Yet the only account of its beautiful insects — butterflies, etc. — which God has made and set before us which the State ever thinks of spending any money on is the account of those which are injurious to vegetation!

This is the way we glorify God and enjoy him forever. Come out here and behold a thousand painted butterflies and other beautiful insects which people the air, then go to the libraries and see what kind of prayer and glorification of God is there recorded. Massachusetts has published her report on "Insects Injurious to Vegetation," and our neighbor the "Noxious Insects of New York.” 

We have attended to the evil and said nothing about the good. This is looking a gift horse in the mouth with a vengeance.

Children are attracted by the beauty of butterflies, but their parents and legislators deem it an idle pursuit. The parents remind me of the devil, but the children of God. Though God may have pronounced his work good, we ask, "Is it not poisonous?” 

Science is inhuman. Things seen with a microscope begin to be insignificant. So described, they are as monstrous as if they should be magnified a thousand diameters. Suppose I should see and describe men and houses and trees and birds as if they were a thousand times larger than they are! With our prying instruments we disturb the balance and harmony of nature.

P. M. — To Second Division. Very warm. 

Looking from Clamshell over Hosmer's meadow, about half covered with water, see hundreds of turtles, chiefly picta, now first lying out in numbers on the brown pieces of meadow which rise above the water. You see their black backs shine on these hummocks left by the ice, fifty to eighty rods off. They would rapidly tumble off if you went much nearer.

This heat and stillness draws them up. It is remarkable how surely they are advertised of the first warm and still days, and in an hour or two are sure to spread themselves over the hummocks. There is to-day a general resurrection of them, and there they bask in the sun. It is their sabbath. 

At this distance, if you are on the lookout, especially with a glass, you can discover what numbers of them there are, but they are shy and will drop into the water on a near approach. All up and down our river meadows their backs are shining in the sun to-day. It is a turtle day. 

As we sat on the steep hillside south of Nut Meadow Brook Crossing, we noticed a remarkable whirlwind on a small scale, which carried up the oak leaves from that Island copse in the meadow. The oak leaves now hang thinly and are very dry and light, and these small whirlwinds, which seem to be occasioned by the sudden hot and calm weather (like whirlpools or dimples in a smooth stream), wrench them off, and up they go, somewhat spirally, in countless flocks like birds, with a rustling sound; and higher and higher into the clear blue deeps they rise above our heads, till they are fairly lost to sight, looking, when last seen, mere light specks against the blue, like stars by day, in fact. I could distinguish some, I have no doubt, five or six hundred feet high at least, but if I looked aside a moment they were lost. The largest oak leaves looked not bigger than a five-cent-piece. These were drifting eastward, — to descend where? Methought that, instead of decaying on the earth or being consumed by fire, these were being translated and would soon be taken in at the windows of heaven. I had never observed this phenomenon so remarkable.

The flight of the leaves. 

This was quite local, and it was comparatively still where we sat a few rods on one side. Thousands went up together in a rustling flock. Many of the last oak leaves hang thus ready to go up. 

I noticed two or more similar whirlwinds in the woods elsewhere this afternoon. One took up small twigs and clusters of leaves from the ground, matted together. I could easily see where it ran along with its nose (or point of its tunnel) close to the ground, stirring up the leaves as it travelled, like the snout of some hunting or rooting animal. 

See and hear chewink. 

See a little snake on the dry twigs and chips in the sun, near the arbutus, uniformly brown (or reddish-brown) above except a yellowish ring on the occiput, the head also lighter than the body; beneath vermilion, with apparently a row of light dots along each side. It is apparently Coluber amamus (?), except that it has the yellowish ring. 

Luzula campestris. Also the Oryzopsis Canadensis by the Major Heywood path-side, say a day, or April 30th, six inches high or more, with fine bristle-like leaves. 

See a thrasher.

What is that rush at Second Division? It now forms a dense and very conspicuous mass some four rods long and one foot high. The top for three inches is red, and the impression at a little distance is like that made by sorrel. Certainly no plant of this character exhibits such a growth now, i. e. in the mass. It surprises you to see it, carries your thoughts on to June. 

The climbing fern is persistent, i. e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1859



The only account of the insects which the State encourages is of the "Insects Injurious to Vegetation.” See April 6, 1857 ("To New Bedford Library. . . Take out Emmons’s Report on the insects injurious to vegetation in New York.

See a plate of the Colias Philodice, or common sulphur-yellow butterfly, male and female of different tinge.”)

It is a turtle day.  See August 28, 1856 ("Has not the great world existed for them as much as for you?”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Painted Turtle

A little snake uniformly brown (or reddish-brown) above except a yellowish ring on the occiput, the head also lighter than the body; beneath vermilion, with apparently a row of light dots along each side.  Probably the ring-neck snake (Coluber punctatus) -- slate gray, black or brown back with complete yellow ring just behind the head, bright yellow or rarely orange belly and occasionally small black spots. Snakes of Massachusetts ringneck snake. Compare HDT’s other "Coluber amaenus” snakes, conforming generally to the redbelly snake (Storeria occipitomaculata occipitomaculata):  October 11, 1856 (“It is apparently Coluber amaenus, the red snake. Brown above, light-red beneath, about eight inches long . . . It is a conspicuous light red beneath, then a bluish-gray line along the sides, and above this brown with a line of lighter or yellowish brown down the middle of the back.”); September 9, 1857 ("It was a dark ash-color above, with darker longitudinal lines, light brick-red beneath. There were three triangular buff spots just behind the head, one above and one each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus”); April 29, 1858 (“A little brown snake with blackish marks along each side of back and a pink belly. Was it not the Coluber amaenus?”)  

The genus Storeria consists of five species, four of which are known as brown snakes, and the other of which is known as the redbelly snake. Most Storeria are a variant of brown in color. They sometimes have a lighter-colored stripe down the center of the back, and small black blotches along the body, and just behind the head. The underside is usually lighter brown-colored, yellow, or in the case of the redbelly snake, reddish in color. They rarely grow beyond 13 inches.

The climbing fern is persistent, i. e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered. CLIMBING FERN, or Hartford Fern (Lygodium palmatum) . A species of fern found, rarely, from Massachusetts to Kentucky and southward, remarkable for climbing or twining around weeds and shrubs ~ Wikisource. See October 2, 1859 (“The climbing fern is perfectly fresh, — and apparently therefore an evergreen, — the more easily found amid the withered cinnamon and flowering ferns.”); November 30, 1851 (“The Lygodium palmatum is quite abundant on that side of the swamp, twining round the goldenrods”)

I sat in the woods

admiring the beauty of

the blue butterfly. 

The earliest gooseberry leaf has spread a third of an inch or more.

April 24.

A rain-threatening April day. Sprinkles a little in the forenoon. 

P. M. — To mayflower. 

The yellow willow peels fairly, probably for several days. Its buds are bursting and showing a little green, at end of railroad bridge. 

On Money-Diggers’ Shore, much large yellow lily root washed up; that white root with white fibres and yellowish leaf—buds. I doubt if I have seen any pontederia this year. 

I find, on the southeast side of Lupine Hill, nearly four rods from the water and a dozen feet above its level, a young Emys picta, one and five eighths inches long and one and a half wide. I think it must have been hatched year before last. It was headed up-hill. Its rear above was already covered with some kind of green moss (?) or the like, which probably had adhered or grown to it in its winter quarters. 

The epigaea on the upper edge of the bank shows a good deal of the pink, and may open in two or three days if it is pleasant. 

April 23, 2024

Trailing arbutus (epigaea) April 24, 2020

Equisetum arvense, by path beyond second brook, probably yesterday. As usual, am struck with the forwardness of the dark patch of slender rush at the cowslip place. 

Returning, in the low wood just this side the first Second Division Brook, near the meadow, see a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast. Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches. 

This season of rain and superabundant moisture makes attractive many an unsightly hollow and recess. I see some roadside lakes, where the grass and clover had already sprung, owing to previous rain or melted snow, now filled with perfectly transparent April rain water, through which I see to their emerald bottoms, -- paved with emerald.

In the pasture beyond Nut Meadow Brook Crossing, the unsightly holes where rocks have been dug and blasted out are now converted into perfect jewels. They are filled with water of crystalline transparency, paved with the same emerald, with a few hardhacks and meadow-sweets standing in them, and jagged points of rock, and a few skaters gliding over them.

Even these furnish goblets and vases of perfect purity to hold the dews and rains, and what more agreeable bottom can we look to than this which the earliest moisture and sun had tinged green? We do not object to see dry leaves and withered grass at the bottom of the goblet when we drink, if these manifestly do not affect the purity of the water. What wells can be more charming? 

If I see an early grasshopper drowning in one, it looks like a fate to be envied. Here is no dark unexplored bottom, with its imagined monsters and mud, but perfect sincerity, setting off all that it reveals. Through this medium we admire even the decaying leaves and sticks at the bottom. 

The brook had risen so, owing to Miles’s running his mill, that I could not get over where I did going.* 

April wells, call them, vases clean as if enameled.

There is a slight sea-turn. I saw it like a smoke beyond Concord from Brown’s high land, and felt the Cool fresh east wind. Is it not common thus early?

The old caterpillar-nests which now lie on the ground under wild cherry trees, and which the birds may use, are a quite light-colored cottony web, close and thick matted, together with the dried excrement of caterpillars, etc., on the inside. 

See a dog’s-bane with two pods open and partially curved backward on each side, but a third not yet open. This soon opens and scatters its down and seeds in my chamber. The outside is a dull reddish or mahogany-color, but the inside is a singularly polished very pale brown. The inner bark of this makes a strong twine like that of the milkweed, but there is not so much of it. 

What is that now ancient and decayed fungus by the first mayflowers, —trumpet-shaped with a very broad mouth, the chief inner part green, the outer dark brown?   

The earliest gooseberry leaf has spread a third of an inch or more.

Goodwin shot, about 6 P. M., and brought to me a cinereous coot (Fulica Americana) which was flying over the willows at Willow Bay, where the water now runs up. It measures fourteen inches to end of tail; eighteen and one half to end of legs. Tail projects a half inch beyond closed wings. Alar extent twenty-six inches. (These dimensions are somewhat stretched.) Above it is a bluish slate, passing into olive behind the wings, the primaries more brownish. Beneath, ash color or pale slate. Head and neck, uniform deep black. Legs, clear green in front, passing into lead-color behind and on the lobes. Edging of wings, white; also the tips of the secondaries for one fourth of an inch, and a small space under the tail. Wings beneath, very light,  almost silvery, slate. Vent, for a small space, black. Bill, bluish-white, with a chestnut bar near tip, and corresponding chestnut spot on each side of lower mandible and a somewhat diamond-shaped chestnut spot at base in front. No noticeable yellow on bill. Irides, reddish. No noticeable whitish spot beneath eyes; only bare lid. Legs and feet are very neat; talons very slender, curving, and sharp, the middle ones 1/2 inch+ long. Lobes chiefly on the inner side of the toes. Legs bare half an inch above the joint. From its fresh and tender look I judge it to be a last year’s bird. It is quite lousy. 

According to Nuttall, they range from 55° north latitude to Florida and Jamaica and west to Oregon (?) and Mexico. Probably breed in every part of North America, —even in Fresh Pond, he would imply, — but their nests, eggs, and breeding-habits are yet unknown. Nocturnal, hiding by day. In Florida in the winter. Come to Fresh Pond in September. A pair there in April, and seen with young birds in June. When alarmed utter a “hoarse kruk.” Called “flusterers” in Carolina, according to Lawson, because they fly trailing their legs or pattering with them over the water. Food: vegetables, also small shellfish, insects, gravel, etc. Leave the Northern States in November.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 24, 1856

*Warren Miles at his new mill tells me eels can’t get above his mill now, in the spring.


A young Emys picta, one and five eighths inches long. See April 21, 1855 ("Saw a painted turtle not two inches in diameter. This must be more than one year old”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)


The inner bark of [the dog's-bane] makes a strong twine like that of the milkweed. See August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum”).; August 5, 1856 (“At the Assabet stone bridge, apparently freshly in flower, — though it may have been out nearly as long as the androscemifolium, — apparently the Apocynum var. hypericifolium (?)”) ;  September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it.")

The earliest gooseberry leaf has spread a third of an inch or more. See April 23, 1855 ("The currant and second gooseberry are bursting into leaf.”)

The epigaea on the upper edge of the bank shows a good deal of the pink. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Equisetum arvense, by path beyond second brook, probably yesterday. . . . See April 24, 1855 ("The Equisetum arvense on the causeway sheds its green pollen . . .”)

Behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. . . . Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches.   This may be HDT’s first certain, correct identification of the hermit, which is the first thrush to arrive in April. He has mistaken it for the wood and the "golden-crowned” and  has been brushing up on his thrushes. See  May 7, 1852 (" A wood [sic] thrush which. . .betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee,  on a low branch.”);  May 22, 1852 ("On my way to Plymouth, looked at Audubon in the State-House. The female (and male?) wood thrush spotted the whole length of belly; the hermit thrush not so.”); April 18, 1854 ("Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring,”); April 27, 1854 ("What a shy fellow my hermit thrush! ");May 4, 1855 ("Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush?); April 21, 1855 ("At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves..”); September 29, 1855 ("At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing,—very like a wood thrush, but softer. Is sure that the hermit thrush sometimes breeds hereabouts.”). See also June 12, 1857 ("At Natural History Rooms.. . . The wood thrush's is a slender egg, a little longer than a catbird's and uniform greenish-blue. . . . The egg of the hermit thrush [which variety?] is about as big as that of Wilson's thrush, but darker green.”); October 22, 1857 (“I see what I call a hermit thrush on the bushes by the shore of Flint’s Pond . . .”) Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

At Nut Meadow Brook rainy days, past springs

April 2.

The radical leaves of some plants appear to have started, look brighter. The shepherd's-purse, and plainly the skunk-cabbage. 

In the brook there is the least possible springing yet. A little yellow lily in the ditch and sweet flag starting in the brook.  

I was sitting on the rail over the brook, when I heard something which reminded me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs. Why is it that not the note itself, but something which reminds me of it, should affect me most?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1854

I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs. See April 2, 1852 ("The clouds, the showers, and the breaking away now in the west, all belong to the summer side of the year and remind me of long-past days.”)   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

Though on the back track, I draw nearer to the fox – my thoughts grow foxy.

February 5. 

The fox that invaded the farmer's poultry-yard last night came from a great distance. 

At Hubbard's blueberry swamp woods, near the bathing-place, came across a fox's track, which I think was made last night or since. The tracks were about two inches long, or a little less, by one and a half wide, shaped thus where the snow was only half an inch deep on ice:

generally from nine to fifteen inches apart longitudinally and three to four inches apart transversely. It came from the west. 

I followed it back. At first it was difficult to trace, to investigate, it, amid some rabbit tracks, of which I did not know whether they had been made before or since. It soon led out of the woods on to the ice of the meadow to a slight prominence, then turned and followed along the side of the wood, then crossed the meadow directly to the riverside just below the mouth of Nut Meadow Brook, visited a muskrat- house there and left its mark, — watered, — for, dog-like, it turned aside to every muskrat-house or the like prominence near its route and left its mark there. You could easily scent it there. 

It turned into the meadow eastward once or twice as it went up the riverside, and, after visiting another muskrat's house, where it left its manure, large and light-colored, as if composed of fir, crossed the river and John Hosmer's meadow and potato-field and the road south of Nut Meadow Bridge. (If it had been a dog it would have turned when it reached the road.) 

It was not lost then, but led straight across, through J. Hosmer's field and meadow again, and over ditch and up side-hill in the woods; and there, on the side of the hill, I could see where its tail had grazed the snow. It was then mixed with rabbit-tracks, but was easily unravelled. Passed out of the wood into J. P. Brown's land, over some mice or mole tracks, then over the middle of Brown's meadows westward, to Tarbell's meadows, till at last, by the brook, I found that it had had a companion up to that point, which turned off. 

Then I saw the large tracks of hounds on the trail. Still it held on, from straight across the road again, some way on an old dog's trail; had trodden and nosed very much about some hardhacks in the field beyond, where were a few mice-tracks, as if for food, the hound's tracks numerous with it; and so I traced it into the Ministerial Swamp, where, the snow-storm increasing, I left it, having traced it back more than a mile westward in a pretty direct course.  

Here was one track that crossed the road, — did not turn in it like a dog, — track of a wilder life. How distinct from the others! Such as was made before roads were, as if the road were a more recent track. This traveller does not turn when he strikes the trail of man.

I followed on this trail so long that my thoughts grew foxy; though I was on the back track, I drew nearer and nearer to the fox each step.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1854

Though I was on the back track, I drew nearer and nearer to the fox each step. See January 27, 1855 ("Its route was for the most part a little below the edge of the Cliff, occasionally surmounting it. At length, after going perhaps half a mile, it turned as if to descend a dozen rods beyond the juniper, and suddenly came to end. Looking closely I find the entrance (apparently) to its hole, under a prominent rock . . . I had never associated that rock with a fox’s den, though perhaps I had sat on it many a time.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, on the back track

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt540205

A first spring day.

March 10.

This is the first really spring day. The sun is brightly reflected from all surfaces, and the north side of the street begins to be a little more passable to foot-travelers. You do not think it necessary to button up your coat. Something analogous to the thawing of the ice seems to have taken place in the air. At the end of winter there is a season in which are are daily expecting spring, and finally a day when it arrives.

I see many middling-sized black spiders on the edge of the snow, very active. 

By John Hosmer's ditch by the riverside I see the skunk-cabbage springing freshly, the points of the spathes just peeping out of the ground, in some other places three inches high even. The radical leaves of innumerable plants (as here a dock in and near the water) are evidently affected by the spring influences. Many plants are to some extent evergreen, like the buttercup now beginning to start. 

Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins, then the relaxing of the earlier alder catkins, then the pushing up of skunk-cabbage spathes (and pads at the bottom of water). This is the order I am inclined to, though perhaps any of these may take precedence of all the rest in any particular case.

What is that dark pickle-green alga (?) at the bottom of this ditch, looking somewhat like a decaying cress, with fruit like a lichen? 

At Nut Meadow Brook crossing we rest awhile on the rail, gazing into the eddying stream. The ripple-marks on the sandy bottom, where silver spangles shine in the river with black wrecks of caddis-cases lodged under each shelving sand, the shadows of the invisible dimples reflecting prismatic colors on the bottom, the minnows already stemming the current with restless, wiggling tails, ever and anon darting aside, probably to secure some invisible mote in the water, whose shadows we do not at first detect on the sandy bottom, — when detected so much more obvious as well as larger and more interesting than the substance, — in which each fin is distinctly seen, though scarcely to be detected in the substance; these are all very beautiful and exhilarating sights, a sort of diet drink to heal our winter discontent. Have the minnows played thus all winter? 

The equisetum at the bottom has freshly grown several inches. Then should I not have given the precedence on the last page to this and some other water-plants ? I suspect that I should, and the flags appear to be starting.

I am surprised to find on the rail a young tortoise, an inch and one sixteenth long in the shell, which has crawled out to sun, or perchance is on its way to the water, which I think must be the Emys guttata, for there is a large and distinct yellow spot on each dorsal and lateral plate, and the third dorsal plate is hexa gonal and not quadrangular, as the E. picta is described to be, though in my specimen I can't make it out to be so. Yet the edges of the plates are prominent, as is described in the E. insculpta, which, but for the spots and two yellow spots on each side of the hind head and one fainter on the top of the head, I should take it to be. It is about seven eighths of an inch wide. Very inactive. When was it hatched and where? 

What is the theory of these sudden pitches, or steep shelving places, in the sandy bottom of the brook ? It is very interesting to walk along such a brook as this in the midst of the meadow, which you can better do now before the frost is quite out of the sod, and gaze into the deep holes in its irregular bottom and the dark gulfs under the banks. Where it rushes rapidly over the edge of a steep slope in the bottom, the shadow of the disturbed surface is like sand hurried forward in the water. The bottom, being of shifting sand, is exceedingly irregular and interesting. 

What was that sound that came on the softened air? It was the warble of the first bluebird from that scraggy apple orchard yonder. When this is heard, then has spring arrived. 

It must be that the willow twigs, both the yellow and green, are brighter-colored than before. I cannot be deceived. They shine as if the sap were already flowing under the bark; a certain lively and glossy hue they have. 

The early poplars are pushing forward their catkins, though they make not so much display as the willows. 

Still in some parts of the woods it is good sledding. 

At Second Division Brook, the fragrance of the senecio, which is decidedly evergreen, which I have bruised, is very permanent and brings round the year again. It is a memorable sweet meadowy fragrance. 

I find a yellow- spotted tortoise (Emys guttata) in the brook. 

A very few leaves of cowslips, and those wholly under water, show themselves yet. 

The leaves of the water saxifrage, for the most part frost-bitten, are common enough. 

Near the caltha was also green hog-spawn, and Channing says he saw pollywogs. Perhaps it is a particularly warm place. 

The alder's catkins — the earliest of them — are very plainly expanding, or, rather, the scales are loose and separated, and the whole catkin relaxed. 

Minott says that old Sam Nutting, the hunter, — Fox Nutting, Old Fox, he was called, — who died more than forty years ago (he lived in Jacob Baker's house, Lincoln; came from Weston) and was some seventy years old then, told him that he had killed not only bear about Fair Haven among the walnuts, but moose!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 10, 1853

This is the first really spring day. . . .You do not think it necessary to button up your coat. See March 15, 1852 ("This afternoon I throw off my outside coat. A mild spring day.  The air is full of bluebirds.  . . . My life partakes of infinity.")

Something analogous to the thawing of the ice seems to have taken place in the air. See February 18, 1857 (“The very grain of the air seems to have undergone a change and is ready to split into the form of the bluebird's warble.”); March 9, 1852 ("[T]he air excites me. When the frost comes out of the ground, there is a corresponding thawing of the man.”); March 21, 1853 (“[W]inter breaks up within us; the frost is coming out of me, and I am heaved like the road; accumulated masses of ice and snow dissolve, and thoughts like a freshet pour down unwonted channels.”)

The air seems to thaw.

Daily we expected spring –

today it arrives.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A first spring day

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

The flight of the leaves.

As we sat on the steep hillside south of Nut Meadow Brook Crossing, we noticed a remarkable whirlwind on a small scale, which carried up the oak leaves from that Island copse in the meadow.

The oak leaves now hang thinly and are very dry and light, and these small whirlwinds, which seem to be occasioned by the sudden hot and calm weather (like whirlpools or dimples in a smooth stream), wrench them off, and up they go, somewhat spirally, in countless flocks like birds, with a rustling sound; and higher and higher into the clear blue deeps they rise above our heads, till they are fairly lost to sight, looking, when last seen, mere light specks against the blue, like stars by day, in fact.

I could distinguish some, I have no doubt, five or six hundred feet high at least, but if I looked aside a moment they were lost.I had never observed this phenomenon so remarkable. This was quite local. Thousands went up together in a rustling flock, -- to descend where?

The flight of the leaves.


H.D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1859

As we sat on the steep hillside south of Nut Meadow Brook Crossing, we noticed a remarkable whirlwind. See April 7, 1860 ("As we were ascending the hill in the road beyond College Meadow, we saw . . . a small whirlwind. . .taking up a large body of withered leaves beneath it, which were whirled about with a great rustling and carried forward with it into the meadow, frightening some hens there.”); December 11, 1858 ("A “swirl,” applied to leaves suddenly caught up by a sort of whirlwind, is a good word enough, methinks.")